Precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau during recent decades: a review based on observations and simulations

Abstract

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has a significant influence on local, regional, and even global weather and climate systems. Precipitation on the TP plays a critical role in the energy and water cycle and terrestrial ecosystem. This study reviewed recent research progress in precipitation changes in recent decades and explored their mechanisms involved based on observations (meteorological station data and satellite remote sensing data) and simulations [global climate models (GCMs) and downscaling modelling]. Our review suggested that the TP precipitation decreases progressively from southeast to northwest, mainly occurs in summer (June–August), accounting for ∼60–70% of annual total, and marginally occurs in winter (December–February), accounting for less than 10%. Diurnal variation of precipitation and convective activity are obvious on the TP. The TP has experienced an overall surface air wetting trend since the 1960s, but with apparent regional and seasonal differences. Projected precipitation on the TP from GCMs and statistical downscaling methods (SDMs) generally increases, while from dynamic downscaling methods (DDMs) slightly increases or even decreases as greenhouse gas emissions continue in the future. Influencing factors such as the TP' and Asian land heating, large‐scale atmospheric circulations, climate warming, aerosols, and land surface conditions all exert prominent but complicated effects on precipitation changes on the TP. More efforts should be made to improve the reliabilities and accuracies of precipitation observational data sets, GCMs, and downscaling modelling. Finally, directions for future research are discussed based on the various means covering high‐quality precipitation observations and more skilful simulations, which are synthetically used to investigate the TP precipitation and its driving mechanisms. It is expected that this review and its results will be beneficial for hydrological and precipitation studies over the TP.